The familiar "Over the Rainbow" theme was composed for the Wizard of Oz movie score by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, in 1938.

“Over the Rainbow” is a song that is symbolic of everyone’s dreams. That is how Judy Garland described her Wizard of Oz classic, the song she said was closest to her heart. For the Van Cliburn Fourth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs (Ft. Worth TX, June 2004), I wrote a set of variations based on this theme to perform if I reached the finals. (I did not.)
It seemed an appropriate theme to be performed at the competition, as it captured the hopes of all the competitors and my own dream of trying to play at the very highest level.

The piece consists of the theme and five variations in the style of five well-known composers.
Here is my challenge. You earn one point for correctly identifying the composer and another point for correctly identifying the particular work on which the variation is based. Top score among pianists at the competition was a five.

If you send me your guesses, I will point you to a webpage where I have posted answers and a musical score. I suggest not posting guesses on the piano society website, at least not yet, since that might ruin the challenge for other musicians.

A very clever and likable set indeed ! And played with real flair, especially the last one. What a shame you could not take this to the Cliburn finale - this only proves how enormously high the quality of participants in that competition is. No problem to get this onto PianoSociety though

I'll take a stab at the composers, though I'm not sure of all of them and could only clearly identify one particular work. Which is a compliment to the originality of the writing.

So shall we now sign you on as a Society Member Composer as well, or was this a one-time composition ?

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